


Natasha's greatest Christmas Present

by bedb



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Christmas Tree, F/M, Humor, Love, Sexiness, White Christams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 10:49:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5663488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bedb/pseuds/bedb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's first Christmas as a free man with the woman he loves and his friends</p>
            </blockquote>





	Natasha's greatest Christmas Present

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alloaroharveyspecter](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=alloaroharveyspecter).



Natasha entered her apartment and immediately heard Bing Crosby crooning White Christmas on the CD player. James was lying on the sofa, eyes shut, hands resting across his abdomen in a resemblance of sleep, but she could see the unshed tears under his dark lashes. She could almost feel the ache inside of him. Last Christmas he had spent it hiding and on the run. Before that he had spent it in cry sleep. While everyone else decked the halls with mistletoe and holly, he simply existed, neither alive nor dead. 

He knew she was back from shopping and didn’t startle when she turned the CD off. “Help me bring the groceries up,” she said and placed the milk in the refrigerator. She didn’t drink the stuff, but James could put away several gallons in a week’s time.

He sat up and smiled at her. “What are we fixing for supper tonight?” he asked and ambled over to give her a peck on the cheek.

“Roast chicken.”

“Sounds good,” he said and headed out the door.

Natasha stopped a moment and sighed. She had nothing against Christmas, and actually enjoyed all the parties and bright lights, but she had never decorated for it herself. Christmas trees shed and artificial ones just didn’t appeal to her. But James… James? He arrived with all her bags hooked through his arms and set them on the table.  
“Need help?” she teased and smiled at the beautiful man who once more graced her life.

“I think I got it all unless you hid something under the car,” he responded and started sticking things in one of the half dozen shelves that lined her elaborate kitchen. He had had only had two cabinets in his tiny apartment in Germany. A hot plate had heated up most of his food.

Natasha, a stickler for real food, handed him a knife and a bowl of potatoes to cut and peel while she seasoned the bird and stuck it in the oven. “Reminds me of KP at Ft. Lehigh,” he said with a grin on his face as he made short work of the fat russets. “How are we fixing them?”

“Mashed or potato salad, your choice.”

“Ooh decisions,” he teased as he dumped the potatoes in the sink and the peels in the trash. “Do we have eggs and mayonnaise?”

She gave him a patient smile and asked, “Would I make it an option if I didn’t have it?”

“Potato salad it is,” he said and rinsed out his bowl.

Natasha watched him a moment and then asked, “Where should we put our tree?”

He stopped and gazed down at her, a look of cautious hope on his face. “I don’t know. Maybe by the window,” he said and nodded at the largest window in the apartment.

“Maybe we can go get a tree tonight,” she said and turned away to work on the salad as if her comment was no big deal. 

“Do you have ornaments?”

“We’ll stop somewhere and get a few more,” she replied and sliced into a large ripe hothouse tomato. “Tony is having his Christmas party on the 22, but I was thinking maybe we can invite Steve and Sam and their dates to Christmas dinner.”

“The Barnes-Romanov first annual Christmas dinner,” he responded eagerly. When James grinned, he was devastating, and there was nothing Natasha wouldn’t do right now to take the sadness and pain out of his eyes. The moment he had the potatoes in the pot on the stove, he dug out his cell phone and said, “I’m going to call them now before they make any plans.”

Oh God, please let them be free, Natasha thought suddenly, a trickle of panic threatening her happiness. James returned to the living room and plopped on the sofa to call his best friend. With an idea popping into her head, she shouted, “Tell him to come over for supper and go tree shopping with us.” She could hear James make the offer and smiled when he enthusiastically named off six as their time to get together. Steve was coming over. Good.

Captain America arrived with a bottle of good white wine for a main course of roast chicken and potato salad. Sitting across from Steve, Natasha listened as the two men reminisced about Christmas pasts when they were so poor their parents had to join Christmas clubs and pay on turkeys or geese for an entire year to ensure they had one at Christmas time. Christmas trees were what rich people had’ poor folks decorated old socks and hung them on the window sills, where they miraculously were filled with candy and fruit, usually an apple or an orange. Church people usually came by when you were little and left small toys, balls or ragdolls if you had a sister. And mass! Best duds and off you went to church.

Never was a kitchen cleaned so quickly as theirs was that night. Then bundling up in coats, scarves and gloves, off they went in Steve’s truck to find the perfect Christmas tree. They arrived at one lot, Christmas lights blinking off and on over their heads, and immediately Steve and James went into recon mode. Natasha just followed in silence, a smile on her face as the guys studied each tree that caught their attention with an eye towards freshness, if it needed any trimming and how tall it was going to be after being set up.

“What kind of decorations do you have?” Steve asked her with all the seriousness of a tank commander asking how many rounds did they have left.

“Actually none,” she confessed and watched the serious expressions spread over their faces.

“We have to rectify that,” Steve told James who bobbed his head agreement. The tree was paid for, wrapped in whatever it was they wrapped it with, tied in the truck bed, and off they went to buy Christmas decorations. 

Arriving at the store, the two men paused to look around, no doubt reconnoitering with an eye on where to start or if they should separate and hit it from two sides. Natasha bought some gum while they made up a mental list of what they wanted to get, then it was off, Steve pushing the shopping cart while James led the way through a mass of humanity. Natasha followed at a more leisurely pace, stopping once to admire a little glass figure of a ballerina. Spying an empty hand basket, she grabbed it and slipped the figurine inside of it. A fluffy white kitty joined it. A pale green sweater caught her eye that she stopped and tried on. It went into the basket.

At one point the Barnes-Rogers express passed her headed towards produce. From what she could see in the cart, they had loaded up on ornaments of various shapes, sizes and colors. They must have grabbed every shiny thing that caught their attention. Just be safe she followed. Aisle after aisle was passed as the boys paused long enough to check it out before moving on.

“What are you looking for?” she asked no one in particular.

“Popcorn,” James answered.

“Popcorn?” she repeated and looked up at Steve.

“Gotta have popcorn,” Steve agreed. “And we might as well get some molasses.” 

“I don’t think they make molasses anymore,” James answered and darted down an aisle ahead of them. “Microwave or stove popped?”

“Microwave,” Natasha answered. The last thing she wanted was burnt popcorn. James reappeared with plain microwave popcorn and dark Karo syrup. “What are you going to do with that?” she asked suspiciously.

“Popcorn balls,” James said with a wicked gleam in his eyes. “Let’s go.”

Once they were home Natasha made hot toddies for all of them, while the boys put up the tree. Prattling on the DVD player was Bing Crosby singing White Christmas in Holiday Hotel. Sipping her drink in a green mug with an elf grinning on it, she watched as they turned a Douglas fir into a Christmas tree. The microwave popcorn was later strung by the three of them into a rope of white. Starting at the top of the tree Steve and James wrapped it with the popcorn and then stood back to admire their work.

“Looks good,” Steve stated with a satisfied smile.

The best I’ve ever seen,” James concurred with a glance at Natasha.

“I rather like it,” she agreed. 

The boys were proud of their tree and took selfies around it, even dragging Natasha in for one. Then it was Christmas movies and hot chocolate until Steve called it an evening. James locked the door behind him and then turned to Nat who was taking cups and snack plates back to the kitchen. Slipping up behind her while she rinsed the dishes, he cupped her breasts and kissed the side of her neck. Giving into the delicious thrill that he sent racing from her throat to her groin, she thought Mission Success.

Tony’s party was the next event they attended. Something of a cross between an office party and an old fashioned Roman orgy, they drank spiked egg nog and danced to some really old Christmas tunes, among them White Christmas. The moment Bing started crooning ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas’ the ghosts of Christmas past started whispering in James’ ears. Taking the cup of egg nog from him, she set it on the end table beside the sofa where Steve sat and took James’ hands in hers.

“I want to dance,” she purred against his neck. How could some long lost memory compete with a real woman pressed against his perfect body humming softly the tune that was both a pleasure and a torment to him? He smiled and took her left hand in his right while wrapping his left arm around her waist. Simple and beautiful.

The thing about music and dancing is that all it takes is one couple answering the siren’s call for others to join in. Belly rubbing music was what Tony called it. Slow and romantic, with enough time to press a soft kiss on a lover’s lips before Tony announced the Ugly Sweater contest. James slipped an arm around his lady’s waist and stepped back. Now he understood why he and Nat had matching ugly gray sweaters with snowflakes on them. 

First up Iron Man in a red and yellow sweater with a drunk Santa on it and Ho Ho Ho emblazoned on the front. Rhodey in a blue reindeer sweater followed. Thor who was down for the party opened his arms with a roaring laugh to show an elf infested sweater.

There were boos and hisses and laughter as one after the other paraded their monstrosities before the group. Nat and James posed as a couple first locked in combat and then locked in an embraced. Tony immediately declared them ineligible for attempting to sway the elegantly dressed judges of Pepper Potts and Maria Hill. In the end Captain America in a military green sweater with a spring of mistletoe over his belt won. Tacky and suggestive, the girls liked it. Who would have believed deep down inside Capt. America had a touch of pervert in him? 

As the fire faded, the couples wandered off to continue their parties in private. James and Natasha locked arm in arm, laughing over Steve’s sweater, returned to her apartment where he grabbed her in a hungry embrace the moment the door closed. “If I put a mistletoe over my dick, would you kiss it?” he teased with a big grin on his face.

She quirked a brow and then licked her lips. “And if I place one over my …..pussy?”

His eyes lit up brighter than Tony’s log fire. “Why don’t we retire to your bedroom and find out.”

Natasha grabbed the front of his sweater and dragged him back towards her bedroom. 

The final homage to Christmas occurred on Christmas day when Steve, Sam and their ladies arrived for Christmas dinner, most of it prepared by James. Sam’s date, a nurse from the VA hospital named Monique brought a sweet potato pie, while Sharon dropped off a chocolate layer cake. The guys brought bottles of wine. 

Christmas presents were small tokens of affection. Any big presents between the lovers were shared earlier. James and purchased Natasha a handmade quilt that had reminded of one his mother had made back in the thirties. She had bought him an antique record player with some old records similar to the ones Steve had. 

Good food, good friends, good day. With no football on TV to take them away from their ladies, the men discovered old movies, pop corn and bright conversation was actually fun. Cuddling was also the order of the day. Nothing like sitting on the sofa or in an overstuffed chair with your woman pressed up against you. When everyone called it an evening, James was truly happy. 

“Thank-you,” he told the woman he loved and planted a tender kiss on the back of her neck as she stuffed the dirty dishes in the dishwasher.

“You are welcome,” she replied as his right hand slipped around her body to cup her breast. Clearly he didn’t care about the dirty dishes. Pressing against her, his intentions clear, she sighed softly and closed her eyes as he toyed with her nipple. “Two can play at this game,” she reminded him.

“That’s what I want,” he murmured against her neck.

Natasha smiled and turned towards her aroused lover. He looked expectantly at her while she raked his body with her eyes. “You’re wearing too many clothes,” she observed and attacked the buttons on his shirt. As she was wearing a pull over sweater, that left her in charge for the time being. Poor beautiful James, his body tortured and modified over countless ages. Beneath all that fine muscle were enhancements that allowed him to use the arm without shattering his own skeleton. She leaned forward and lightly kissed his left nipple. “Let’s go to bed,” she said and slipped past him. 

Love does not have to be complicated. You just have to want it, be willing to compromise to make the other person happy. James adored her and would do anything for her, and now this small gift from her heart was being returned ten times over, but the greatest present from him was his smile. For however long it lasted, it was hers and no one else’s. When he surrendered completely to her and froze for several heart beats above her, she thanked whatever entity whether God or the cosmos that brought him back to her.  
“James,” she whispered, “I love you.”


End file.
